the Pentagon issued Air Force Regulation 200-2. AFR 200-2 was
drafted purely as a public relations weapon in that it prohibited the
release of any information about a sighting to the public or media,
except when the sighting was positively identified as natural
phenomena. In addition, while the previous regulation had stated that
sightings should not be classified higher than restricted, the new
regulation insured that all sightings would be classified as restricted.
Then, even worse, in December 1953 the Joint Chiefs of Staff followed
AFR 200-2 with Joint Army-Navy-Air Force Publication 146, and this
made the releasing of any information to the public a crime under the
Espionage Act, punishable by a one to ten year prison term or a fine of
ten thousand dollars. And the most ominous aspect of JANAP 146 was
that it applied to anyone who knew it existed – including commercial
airline pilots. Needless to say, that regulation effectively put a stop to
the flow of information to the public. To all intents and purposes – and
contrary to public Air Force pronouncements – the UFO project had
been plunged into secrecy.’
Stanford thought of Albuquerque, of what Gardner had told him,
of himself at the top of the stairs, dazed by incomprehension. That
feeling was with him now, a growing fear that had no shape, and he
began to understand that the facts were rarely what they appeared to be.
He stared at O’Hara, his old CIA friend, wondering how such men
managed to flourish without guilt or shame.
‘Wait a minute,’ Stanford said. ‘I’m getting a bit confused here.
You say that the CIA virtually directed the Robertson Panel, but that
their main concern was national security – not a belief in the UFOs.’ ‘No,’ O’Hara said, now returning Stanford’s gaze. ‘I’m saying that
our superiors hoodwinked us.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Listen,’ O’Hara said. ‘According to our superiors, the reason they
wanted the interest in UFOs killed off was that the UFO reports were
deemed a threat to national security: first, because a deliberately
confused American public might think attacking enemy aircraft were
merely UFOs; second, because a foreign power could exploit the UFO
craze to make the public doubt official Air Force statements about
UFOs and thereby undermine public confidence in the military; and,
third, because in terms of psychological warfare, particularly in 1952,
the communications lines of the whole country could be saturated by a
few hundred phone calls, and such calls – which always came after a
rush of UFO sightings – were putting the defense network in jeopardy.
Those were the reasons they gave us for the need for suppression.’ ‘But you thought they were bullshit,’ Stanford said.
‘Right,’ O’Hara said. ‘If national security was the issue, then the
suppression had a certain amount of logic. However, if national security
was the only concern, why were we humiliating so many UFO witnesses
and harassing our own ground and air crews into keeping their mouths
shut? The only logical explanation was that the higher echelons of the
Air Force were more concerned about the phenomenon than they were
willing to admit, that they possibly knew more about it than they were
willing to admit, and that for reasons of their own they were actively
encouraging their most competent personnel from investigating the
subject.’
‘Ruppelt seems to be the perfect example of all this.’
‘Right,’ O’Hara said. ‘It seemed to me that the more proven
unknowns Ruppelt came up with – and most of his unknowns were
unknowns – the more nervous the Air Force became. I first realized this
when the CIA told us to lie to him about the recommendations of the
Robertson Panel. I was even more convinced when they neglected to
replace him when he went to Denver, and when they stripped Blue
Book of its staff in his absence.’
‘Still,’ Stanford said, ‘that doesn’t necessarily mean too much. As
UFO reports clogging their communications network, they would have
wanted those reports reduced to the minimum.’
‘Let me give you a better example,’ O’Hara said. ‘Shortly after
scaring the hell out of the Air Force with the evidence presented to the
Robertson Panel, Ruppelt came up with a couple of cases that virtually
confirmed that the UFOs were intelligently controlled.’ He returned his
gaze to the notes in his file. ‘The first was a sighting that occurred over
Haneda AFB, now Tokyo International Airport, in Japan. This UFO
was initially observed by two control tower operatives who saw a large,
brilliant light in the northeast over Tokyo Bay. The light, which was
moving, was observed through seven by fifty binoculars; it had a
constant brilliance, was circular in shape, and appeared to be the upper
half of a large, round, dark shape that was about four times the diameter
of the light itself. Then, when it moved, the tower operatives saw a
second, dimmer light on the lower edge of the dark, shadowy portion.
This particular UFO was simultaneously tracked by radar and observed
by intelligence officers as it flew back and forth across the central part
of Tokyo Bay, sometimes almost hovering, then abruptly accelerating to
three hundred miles an hour. It was pursued by, and deliberately eluded,
an F-94 airplane.’
‘Deliberately?’
‘So it seemed,’ O’Hara said. ‘That sighting was thoroughly
investigated by the FEAF intelligence officers in the area, then later
investigated just as thoroughly by Ruppelt. Both agreed that it was
definitely not a weather target, that it definitely wasn’t a star, that both
visual and radar lock-ons had proved that it was solid and moving. They
also proved that each turn the UFO made was constant, and that the
straight “legs” between the turns were about the same length. Indeed,
Ruppelt later wrote that the sketch of the UFO’s flight path reminded
him very much of the crisscross patterns he used to fly during World
War Two – and that the only time the UFO had seriously deviated from
this pattern was when the F-94 tried to pursue it.’
‘And the second sighting?’
‘The second sighting was one that occurred on the night of 29
July, 1952, when an F-94 attempted to intercept a UFO over eastern Michigan. This sighting was even more interesting in that there was a definite reason for every move the UFO made. First, it made a one hundred and eighty-degree turn because the F-94 was closing in on it. Next, it alternately increased and decreased its speed – but only increase its speed when the airplane was closing in on it, and always slowed down when it was just out of range of the airplane’s radar. Then, adding weight to his argument that such moves could not have been random, Ruppelt submitted a third report – the one he called the best unknown ever – of an F-84 pilot who chased a visually and radar located object right across Rapid City. According to the pilot and the radar operatives, that target accelerated and decelerated so that there was always precisely three miles between it and the F-84 – and it kept this up u
ntil the F-84 ran out of fuel. Later, both the pilot and the tower controller told Ruppelt that the UFO seemed to have some kind of automatic
warning radar linked to its power supply.’
‘Okay,’ Stanford said. ‘Let’s assume the UFOs were intelligently
controlled… But what has this to do with the CIA?’
‘Think,’ O’Hara said, studying his dwindling cigar, forming his
lips into an O and blowing a thin steam of smoke. ‘If, as the CIA
claimed, national security was their only concern, such sightings should
have scared the hell out of them and made them want to know more.
That, however, was not remotely the case. Instead of encouraging
Ruppelt or utilizing his information, they went all out to stop him in his
tracks – and they put him under surveillance.’
‘So what you’re saying is that they claimed to be concerned with
national defense, yet they didn’t want people watching the skies – a
contradiction in terms.’
‘That’s right,’ O’Hara said.
Stanford sighed and rubbed his eyes, feeling weary a slightly
unnerved, convinced that he was getting out of his depth and
approaching a danger zone. The contradictions were now obvious:
national security did not explain them. It was clear that the Pentagon,
the CIA and the Air Force were more concerned with the UFOs than
they admitted and were still trying to hide that fact. He sighed again and
studied O’Hara. His old friend’s blue eyes were clear. Stanford shook
his head wearily from side to side and wondered if he was dreaming. ‘Keep going,’ he said.
‘Okay,’ O’Hara said. ‘I’ll stick to Ruppelt for the moment.
Because what Ruppelt did, and how the Air Force reacted, are
representative of the whole shady story and might tell you a lot.’ He
stubbed his cigar out, put his hands behind his head, then leaned far
back in his chair, now ignoring his notes. ‘I had in fact been watching
Ruppelt from about August the previous year, 1952 – and the order to
report his movements simply intrigued me. Bear in mind that at that
particular time there was a sudden rash of UFO sightings. Now, those
sightings were mainly the build up to the beginning of September, when
every morning for about two weeks there were half a dozen or so new
reports from the southeastern United States, notably Georgia and
Alabama, a lot of them from the vicinity of the new, top secret Atomic
Energy Commission complex at Savannah River, many more over
Brookley Air Force Base near Mobile, Alabama. That same month the
NATO naval forces were holding maneuvers off the coast of Europe,
namely, Operation Mainbrace. On 20 September an American
newspaper reporter and a group of pilots and flight deck crew on board
an aircraft carrier in the North Sea observed a perfectly clear, silvery
sphere moving across the sky just behind the fleet of ships. The object
was large and appeared to be moving rapidly, and the reporter shot
several pictures of it. The pictures were developed straight away and
immediately studied by the intelligence officers aboard the carrier. The
pictures were excellent, and the object looked like a large balloon – but
no balloons were in the area and an analysis of all the photos proved
conclusively that the object had been moving very fast. Then, the
following day, six English Air Force pilots flying a formation of jet
fighters over the North Sea saw a shiny, spherical object coming from
the direction of the NATO fleet. They took after it and lost it, but when
they neared their base one of the pilots noticed that the UFO was
following them. He turned back toward it, but the UFO then turned
away and outdistanced the RAF airplane in a matter of minutes. Finally,
on the third day, a UFO was observed near the fleet, this time over the
Topcliffe Aerodrome in England. A pilot in a British jet was sent in
pursuit and managed to get close enough to describe the object as,
quote, “round, silvery and white” and to note that it , quote, “seemed to
rotate around its vertical axis and sort of wobble.” Then, when he tried
to get closer, the UFO shot off…’
O’Hara sat forward again, removed his hands from behind his
head, propped his elbows firmly on the desk and cupped his chin in his
hands.
‘Naturally, those sightings disturbed NATO,’ he said. ‘In fact,
according to an RAF intelligence officer in the Pentagon, it was the
Mainbrace sightings that finally forced the RAF to recognize the UFO
phenomenon – a fact they have denied to this day. However, Ruppelt
investigated the case and assessed all those sightings as unknowns.
Unfortunately, this encouraged him to believe that he could now pin
down the UFOs for good… and it was this very enthusiasm that led to
the destruction of the most important system ever devised for UFO
research.’
‘Don’t look so pleased,’ Stanford said. ‘Just tell me what
happened.’
‘Okay. For a long time Ruppelt and Brigadier General Garland,
then chief at the ATIC, had been looking for a way of getting concrete
information about the UFOs. What they finally came up with was a plan
for visual spotting stations to be established all over northern New
Mexico – an area that had consistently produced more UFO reports than
any other area in America. The visual spotting stations would be
equipped with specially designed sighting devices, all of which would
be linked with an instantaneous interphone system: any two stations
could then track the same object and, from their separate readings,
compute the UFO’s altitude and speed. Also at each visual spotting
station would be instruments to measure the passage of any body that
was giving off heat, any disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field, and
any increase in nuclear radiation at the time of the sighting.’ ‘I never heard of it,’ Stanford said, ‘but it sounds pretty
impressive.’
‘It was,’ O’Hara said. ‘In fact, it was the first time that a proper,
scientific system had been designed and submitted to the Air Force. It
was virtually foolproof and if it had been adopted, we could have
tracked, photographed and measured UFOs with unprecedented
precision.’
‘And you’re going to tell me the Air Force killed it off.’ ‘Right.’
‘Why?’
O’Hara shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. All I know is that in December of
that year – when Ruppelt’s plans went to Washington, DC, for approval
– the US Navy was going to shoot the first H-bomb during Project Ivy,
and some folks in the Pentagon, remembering the unidentifieds over
Operation Mainbrace, directed Ruppelt to fly out to the test area and
organize a UFO reporting team.’ O’Hara grinned laconically, spread his
hands out in the air, then gently kicked his chair back, his legs lazily
outstretched. ‘As it is with the CIA, so it is with the Pentagon: there are
wheels within wheels and somewhere there’s a wheel you can’t reach.
What I mean by this is that the order for Ruppelt to fly to Project Ivy
came down in November, but by December his plans for
the visual radar
sighting network were received in Washington… and shortly after that I
received a phone call from the Pentagon, suggesting that I axe Ruppelt’s
trip – which, naturally, I did.’
‘So what you’re suggesting is that certain people in the Pentagon
are genuinely concerned with the UFOs, but that others, for some
unknown reason, don’t want the UFOs to be investigated.’
‘What a bright boy you are.’
Stanford stared past O’Hara’s head and saw the tops of the
skyscrapers, the sun a silvery ball in the clear sky, the white clouds
drifting languidly.
‘So,’ he said eventually, ‘were UFOs seen over Project Ivy during
the shooting of the H-bomb?’
‘I don’t know,’ O’Hara said, ‘and neither did Ruppelt. Shortly
after Project Ivy came the Robertson Panel and its consequences, and a
few months later, in August ’53, Ruppelt, doubtless feeling bitter, left
the Air Force for good. By the end of that year, Project Blue Book had a
mere three staff members left, its investigating authority had been
handed over to the 4602d – the inexperienced Air Intelligence Service
Squadron – and most of its projects had been strangled systematically
through a reduction in funds. Ruppelt, Fournet and Chops were no
longer involved, and General Garland, once a strong Ruppelt supporter,
never again raised his voice in defense of any UFO investigation.’ Stanford sat there saying nothing, not knowing what to say. He
thought of Ruppelt and Gardner, of the deceptions and suppression,
then he thought of Irving Jacobs in the desert and wondered what it all
meant. The Air Force was covering up. The Pentagon was involved. The whole of Washington, DC, was concerned with the UFOs, but didn’t want them investigated. Stanford didn’t understand it. Nothing seemed to add up. The mystery deepened and swirled there before him
like a black hole in space.
‘It just doesn’t make sense,’ he finally said. ‘What was the purpose
of all that?’
‘I kept asking myself that question,’ O’Hara said. ‘The only thing I
came up with was the thought that maybe there was something in the
UFO phenomenon – and, more intriguing, that maybe the Air Force
actually knew what the UFOs were and therefore wanted to keep the lid
tight on the matter.’